Addicted to debt

Whenever Gatera (my hostel mate) gets money from parents; first thing he does is storm the bar and drink all week, then after the pockets are drained he comes to us (hostel mates) seeking financial assistance with excuses like “the mobile money network has broken down and my money is stuck there, lend me some; I will pay you immediately after withdrawing my own, the moment the network normalizes”.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Whenever Gatera (my hostel mate) gets money from parents; first thing he does is storm the bar and drink all week, then after the pockets are drained he comes to us (hostel mates) seeking financial assistance with excuses like "the mobile money network has broken down and my money is stuck there, lend me some; I will pay you immediately after withdrawing my own, the moment the network normalizes”.Sometimes whenever he approaches one of us who is no stranger to his ways, asking for loans, we only give the money to him not as a debt but as a donation, certain he can never payback whatever the case. Being in debt is seemingly a calling to him, to coin it better; Sprinting is to Bolt as debt is to Gatera. It’s something he enjoys doing and is prominent for in the locality.To be truthful, Gatera gets more money from his parents than anyone else in the hostel. Surprisingly, he is repeatedly broke and seems to have made borrowing and never paying back a habit; at least he owes everyone on the premise (even the neighbourhood) some money: the warden, cook, cleaner, name them.He is very poor at managing his finances and it’s the reason he constantly gets broke, but doesn’t seem to notice it. Try to advise him about it and see how furious he becomes. Gatera is the "buy on sight” type; the kind that purchases an item not because of need; but because they got excited after spotting it at a window shop or with a hawker, then abandon it thereafter (without use) somewhere in the corner of his room or under the bed -----He is in the category of people who will buy something because someone next door has done so. Dude is shameless, he is one guy who will cook-up a story or slip into a nearby bush on spotting a creditor from a distance--- he has no friends for that reason because no one trusts him.Even when he genuinely needs the money, no one wants to bail him out, because it’s difficult to tell; most people already have this impression that he does it (borrowing and never paying back) for sport.He is one person who enjoys being helped but has never helped-out any one, as far as I remember; he is always at the mercy of others.However Gatera is not alone, there are many other people out there who fall under his category. And so they should be warned that there is no benefit in being a bed fellow with debts, apart from being dependent, losing self-respect, always feeling insecure, so on and so forth.